August 14 2017 – Protesters in Durham, North Carolina decide to take matters into their own hands and take down a confederate statue.
The statue represented a soldier who fought in the Civil War and an inscription on the front read “The Confederate States of America.”
One organizer of the protest told WNCN that toppling the statue was in response to the violence at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va. this weekend.“It needs to be removed,” organizer Loan Tran told the news station. “These Confederate statues in Durham, in North Carolina, all across the country.”
so…i’m gonna get flak for saying this but, this shit is wrong. that statue represents a part of american history, history is fucked up, its messy and embarrassing to look back on, but it should not be destroyed or wiped clean or erased. that statue represented a time that we went through as a nation it shows us where we came from who we are and where we are today. change the plaque, write a message about tolerance use it as a chance to learn from history. not to mention the fact that not every confederate soldier was a racist slave owning piece of shit…soldiers are soldiers they fight because they are told to. just like almost none of the Wehrmacht were nazi scumbags most of them were just teenage boys conscripted into a war that wasn’t theirs. some of these statues remind us of the horrors of war, the senseless loss of life or the horrors of slavery, racism and injustice. tearing down that statue you are censoring history. nothing more.
Statues are lionization and glorification. They are meant to honor the subject.
If you want to teach about the horros of Slavery, make a statue of Slaves or those that fought to free them.
If you want to teach about the horros of war, make a memorial and honor all those who lost their lives in ending slavery, soilders, abolitionist, and slave. Idgaf personally about Nazi soilders or Confederate soilders, but you do you I guess.
If you want to teach about history, do what Germany did, and make exibits in musems and teach about it explicitly and how awful and horrible it was in schools.
Stop telling people their suffering is less important than a “teachable moment.” That a constant reminder of past oppression is less important.